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Football: CU Buffs will take things slow in first spring practice under Mike MacIntyre

Practices begin Thursday and will be open to the media and the public

By Kyle Ringo Buffzone.com

Posted:
03/05/2013 12:22:11 PM MST

Updated:
03/05/2013 11:48:03 PM MST

The plan for spring football practices at Colorado is to take things slow and teach players to do everything the right way. Offensive and defensive schemes will be installed gradually to avoid overwhelming a roster full of players who have been beaten down by losing in recent years.

First-year coach Mike MacIntyre met with reporters today at the Dal Ward Center to discuss his plans for spring ball, which begins Thursday afternoon at 3:30 and continues into mid-April. The spring game is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Saturday, April 13, (Pac-12 Network) but there will be one practice that occurs after the spring game.

MacIntyre said he is keeping it simple – at least initially – to allow players to play fast without having to think much. He believes doing so will allow coaches to best evaluate each player's individual ability.

“You don't want to paralyze them and then you can't see and you're thinking, 'Well, god, that guy is not very good. Well, it's because he's thinking so much,'” MacIntyre said. “The second half we'll be putting in more and more, but we will not have the whole offense or the entire defense in by the end of spring.

“They will have all the major concepts in though, which to me learning anything is learning the concepts. If you learn the concepts and you can add wrinkles to it, you're fine.”

MacIntyre and his coaches have insisted they haven't formed opinions about players ahead of time through film study of last season. He said he is waiting to get on the field with the Buffs to see what each player is capable of first hand.

With that philosophy driving things, the Buffs enter spring with no depth chart. Players are grouped together by position and will earn their spot on a future depth chart based on how they perform.

MacIntyre said the first eight practices will be used primarily to teach and evaluate. At the midway point of spring, when players get a week off for spring break, coaches will begin forming a depth chart and will whittle the number of quarterbacks involved in the competition for the starting job from six to three.

It is a decidedly different approach than what can be expected in the future as MacIntyre continues to build his program.

“Next spring at this time, we'll just go out there and start calling it,” he said.

MacIntyre said he has four primary goals for the spring.

* Come out completely healthy

* Form a two-deep depth chart

* Have good idea of where incoming freshmen will have to impact depth chart

* Continue building the culture he envisions

It has been more than three months since the disastrous 2012 season at Colorado ended with the Buffs producing a 1-11 record, the worst in the modern era of the program. Former coach Jon Embree was fired and the school turned to MacIntyre after looking at several other coaches.

MacIntyre turned around San Jose State from a program that was 2-10 and in trouble with the NCAA because of its shabby academic performance in his first season to one that excelled last season both on and off the field. CU and its fans are hoping he can pull off the same kind of transformation in Boulder and the work on the field begins Thursday afternoon.

MacIntyre said he has purposely taken things slow at other stops in his coaching career just as he plans to this spring at CU. He said it's a philosophy he has developed over time and one that was really ingrained in him during his time coaching in the NFL under coach Bill Parcells, who hung up a sign when he coached the Dallas Cowboys that said, “Knowledge equals confidence equals playing fast.”

All of spring practices will be open to the media and the public. MacIntyre said he doesn't want any details of what goes on at practice published by fans on Internet message boards or blogs or he will be forced to close practices. It's unclear how CU plans to police the policy with at least a half-dozen fan sites and several newspapers who cover the team offering fans the ability to comment anonymously on their sites.

“Zero, I don't want anything out there,” MacIntyre said when asked what his expectations are for things fans shouldn't be discussing on the Internet. “If we do and I can't stop it, then we'll have to close practice and I do not want to do that.

“I want a dad who is home on an afternoon and his 8-year-old boy looks at him and says, 'Dad, I want to go watch practice.' I want him to be able to take him to practice and experience that. I want him to fall in love with Colorado football or even fall in love with football because I love this game. So I do not want that to hinder it.”

Follow Kyle on Twitter @KyleRingo

CU football coach Mike MacIntyre talks to reporters about spring practice at the University of Colorado in Boulder
(
Mark Leffingwell
)

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